Out of the Frying Pan
by Belphegor
Summary: "interesting" [ˈɪntrəstɪŋ]: adj. 1. Capable of holding one's attention. 2. Evoking a feeling of interest. 3. Oh God, we're all going to die.
1. Chapter One

**Author's Note**: This is set just after "Hogan's Hofbräu".

Can you believe I started writing this one around November 2012? _And_ I've had a longer story cooking since summer of that year, which is barely reaching two thirds of completion. Not to mention the few plot bunnies that just will _not_ come out of the Gonculator. I just hope that 2014 will be kinder to my muse than 2013 has been …

Huge "thank you"s to Emily, beta reader extraordinaire, and Tricksterrune (aka Runenklinge) for her invaluable linguistic assistance.

_Disclaimer: All characters here belong to Bernard Fein (and his estate) and Albert Ruddy. I have no idea whom Finagle's Law does belong to, since I'm told there wasn't a Mr Finagle._

* * *

**Out of the Frying Pan**

**_Chapter One_**

Midnight tolled at the St Johannes dem Täufer church, and Hammelburg fell silent again.

Hilda tightened her woolly cardigan around her shoulders to ward off the cold and smiled at the three retreating figures.

"Good night, boys! Danke schön!"

Newkirk, Carter and LeBeau all waved at her; Newkirk winked, LeBeau grinned and Carter smiled good-naturedly. The soldiers from the 4th Panzer Army had been a little less talkative than they had been the day before, but they had let a few key facts slip over their plates of Schäufele that would presumably make Colonel Hogan – and a lot of people on the other side of the radio – happy. The lovely Hofbräu owner's sunny face was a small but significant bonus.

Still, Newkirk privately thought, the sooner this waiter job was over, the better. The Adolf Hitler Division had gone half a week ago, and with it the two officers who had so effectively extorted money from Klink for their (alleged) "Beautify Berchtesgaden" operation. Unfortunately, the day after, the 4th Panzer Army had stopped by on the way to the Russian Front, so the "Stalag XIII work detail" had temporarily taken up work at Hilda's Hofbräu again.

Waiting tables all evening was a more tiring business than it sounded, especially when said waiters were doing a little spying on the side.

LeBeau appeared to be following the same train of thought, as he muttered with a yawn, "If I have to make Sauerbraten again ten years from now it'll be too soon. And don't talk to me about Reibekuchen."

"What's Reibekuchen?" Carter asked with mild interest. LeBeau shot him a glare and reached up to pull the American's aviator's hat over his eyes.

"It's a kind of German potato pancake," Newkirk explained with just the right pitch in his drawl that made LeBeau's glare jump to him instead. Honestly, sometimes it was too easy to get him riled up. "Deep fried, goes well with pumpernickel apparently. Oh, cheer up, LeBeau," he added sotto voce as they crossed the Adolf Hitler bridge out of Hammelburg, "I thought you liked getting out of camp once in a while. At least you got to cook – _we_ took orders and listened to mostly useless gossip all evening."

"I know, but these barbarians always have to order the same things! And one of them even ordered Liverwurst with chocolate! _Chocolate!_"

"Well," Carter mused, "you haven't tried it, have you? Then you don't know if it's really that bad." He yawned, too, and took a look around, ignoring LeBeau's disbelieving stare. "Boy, that fog looks thick. Was it already like that when we got to the Hofbräu?"

Newkirk was about to make a disparaging comment out of habit, but he closed his mouth and glanced around as well. Carter had a point. With the sunset deceptively thin wisps of mist had risen from the earth, slowly, but surely, and now the whole wood was wreathed in a pale fog which hid everything more than sixty feet away.

"Can't be helped now," he said in a less jaunty tone than he liked. "Don't worry, we'll be back to camp in no time if none of us wanders off." Instinctively his eyes searched for Carter. The bloke was so absent-minded he had practically elevated his talent for getting lost to an art form.

"Next time we'll have the Colonel ask London for a weather forecast before we go." LeBeau's joke fell a little flat, and he thrust his fists into his pockets, not quite able to hide the uncertainty in his eyes. "Or perhaps we could borrow a truck from the motor pool."

Newkirk rolled his eyes. "Sure, because a patrol finding three Allied prisoners in a German truck would not get nosy and ask nasty questions. Look, if we're spotted here, we'll just say we cut through the wire and scarpered."

LeBeau silently conceded the point, and they all made their way through the treacherous fog.

After a while, though, Newkirk heard him murmur, "I miss the city."

"Why?" Carter asked in genuine surprise, as though the very idea was daft.

LeBeau pulled one end of his scarf over his shoulder and replied, "You can't get lost in Paris. There's always a sign to tell you where you are and let you know where you're going. But here? All the trees look the same. Especially in that fog."

"You've never been to London," Newkirk retorted with a smirk. "Signs or not, when the smog comes down, you can't see five feet in front of you. Believe me, I've seen a few pea soupers in my time, and this little fog doesn't come close. At least you can breathe in here."

"To think that I used to _want_ to go to London …"

"Oi! I'm a Londoner, _I_'m allowed! You're –"

"Hey, did you hear that?"

Newkirk swallowed the comment he had been about to make – so did LeBeau, by the looks of it – and they both glanced at Carter. "Hear what?"

Carter peered around into the dark, but couldn't seem to find anything wrong with their surroundings.

"Nothing. I thought I heard … Nope, nothing."

Newkirk listened intently, too, but apart from the usual forest sounds, he didn't make out anything of note. The damp cold drew an involuntary shiver from him. "Why don't we get a move on, eh? Before something unpleasant turns up."

"Entièrement d'accord," mumbled LeBeau, who kept rubbing his gloved hands for warmth. He was also stealing glances around him, as though he were feeling edgy as well. Whether this was because of Carter's false alarm or because he had actually heard something to warrant their unease, Newkirk didn't know.

Carter said nothing, and kept staring in front of them as though the power of his gaze alone were enough to lift the fog, his head tilted forward slightly. He looked uncharacteristically preoccupied.

"Something on your mind, Carter?" Newkirk asked in a low voice after a while. The American shook his head.

"Just the fog. And the thing I thought I heard earlier."

There was something in his voice that Newkirk didn't like, as though the 'thing' he heard earlier was a definite possibility instead of a simple false alarm. He could have shaken his head and said something derisive about _some_ people getting other people spooked for nothing; but the other two didn't look like they were in the mood for sarcastic banter, so he aimed for reassuring rather than mocking.

"Well, I can't deny the fog's making things a little more … interesting, but it's not like we could get lost, right? We know these wood like the back of our hands! Look, there's the tree we hid behind last year while those Krauts were shooting at us – I can see the bullet marks!"

He might have missed his mark, or the Peter Newkirk approach to reassurance needed some work. Either way, there was a beat, during which Carter and LeBeau stared at him oddly.

Newkirk shrugged. "Well? It's as good a marker as anything."

LeBeau made the familiar wry grimace that said exactly what he thought of Newkirk's choice of markers; the next second, the expression on Carter's face shifted.

"Uh, the thing I thought I heard earlier?" he whispered, urgency creeping into his tone. "It's back."

Ignoring the little voice that told him that Carter was probably imagining things, Newkirk pricked up his ears. The next moment, he caught the last sound he would have expected to hear tonight: the shrill whine of a plane in distress, far in the distance, but getting closer by the second.

The three men leaped for cover under the nearest large tree as one. No need risking getting seen by the wrong kind of eyes.

"I hope the pilot has a parachute," LeBeau whispered. "What do you think, one of ours or one of them?"

"Yeah, and what's it doing here, all alone?"

"No idea," muttered Newkirk, still listening closely. "But that's a Messerschmitt, I reckon. Took a nasty hit, by the sound of it."

"Then I take it back," said LeBeau darkly. "Forget the parachute."

Newkirk gave a wry smirk, but Carter didn't seem to have heard at all. His eyes were still fixed upwards, and in the relative darkness Newkirk thought he gone pale.

"Guys? I … I think it's coming straight at us!"

Half a second later, the plane crashed into the ground, pieces zinging everywhere and hitting everything in their way. When it hit the dirt, the blast sent debris flying through the air in a shower of earth before the battered metal gave one last faint teeth-gnashing groan and began to settle.

Then the fuel tank exploded.

Fortunately, Carter's estimate turned out to be off by about five yards.

* * *

Translations/Notes:

_Danke schön_: "Thank you very much"/"Thanks a lot."

_Schäufele_: Traditional German dish, made from pork's shoulder meat.

_Liverwurst_: Pig's liver sausage. I don't know how commonplace cold cuts with chocolate for breakfast is in Germany, but a few years ago, in a hotel in Donaueschingen (Baden-Württenberg), I saw a little old German lady take mortadella with Nutella for breakfast.

_Entièrement d'accord_: (I) entirely agree.

The third definition of "interesting" in the summary was inspired by one of my favourite lines from _Serenity_, the movie sequel of _Firefly_. Because yes, sometimes saying "it's going to be interesting", not unlike its cousin "what could possibly go wrong?", really does mean that …


	2. Chapter Two

**Author's Note**: I haven't done much writing (nor reviewing, to my shame – I still have a backlog of stories open in my tabs) for a couple of months, so as usual I'm worrying that I might be losing the writing bug. Plus this story is definitely not unforgettable material. But it was fun to write – up until the point where writer's block struck and stayed stuck for months :-/

_Disclaimer: Characters belong to Albert Ruddy and Bernard Fein's estate, and we're all hoping that if they do make something with said characters they won't make a complete mess of things. In the meantime, fanfiction happens._

* * *

**Out of the Frying Pan**

_**Chapter Two**_

LeBeau drifted in the turbid waters between consciousness and black for a while before he broke the surface with a gasp and almost swallowed a mouthful of dirt. The ground was cold and the smell of damp soil filled his nostrils, making him sneeze. He gingerly lifted his head from the ground and coughed, with an impressive layer of earth, pieces of leaves and chips of wood falling off him as he shifted.

"Newkirk?" His voice came out as a croak, and he cleared his throat. "Carter?"

His entire body ached, but nothing felt broken when he moved again, carefully. However, it was a little while before he was sitting up and looking around him.

Confused though he was, it took him about ten seconds to scramble to his feet in alarm when he saw the fire around the fallen plane.

It had rained all day – hence the fog earlier – and the water had yet to sink into the sodden ground and trees, making the fire progress slower than it could have been. If it hadn't been for the damp weather, LeBeau realised, he would probably have been dead by now.

His stomach gave a sickening lurch. Where were the others?

"Newkirk! Carter!" he shouted, taking a couple of unsteady steps towards the burning wreck of the plane. An acrid smoke and the sharp smell of molten metal and fuel hit him in the face, carried by a slight breeze. Nothing moved, but the fire gained a bit of ground in his direction.

His feet moved before he even realised he should get out of there quickly, but his eyes were still searching everywhere, alternating between the glare of the flames and the sheer dark of the woods around it.

_They can't be in there_, he told himself firmly. _We probably ran in different directions before the plane crashed. So, where –_

The breeze picked up, and the flames crept closer at an alarming speed. LeBeau stopped thinking altogether and ran.

He had not run thirty or forty metres when his foot slipped on a patch of mixed wet leaves and earth. The world stopped as he flailed desperately to regain equilibrium, then gravity reasserted itself; his foot went up, his head went down, and the rest of him inevitably followed as he tumbled down a slope, hitting every bump and stone on the way. A small avalanche of twigs and pebbles followed him.

LeBeau reached out blindly and tried to grasp at something – anything – that might break his fall; he had just grabbed a fistful of earth when he stopped rolling and seemed suspended in mid-air …

… for about a fraction of a second …

… And plunged head first into something liquid and cold.

_Must be that deep pond near the fork in the road_, the part of his brain which wasn't busy trying to find out where was the surface and where was the bottom provided unhelpfully. Trying to open his eyes only made it worse. The water was murky at the best of times; at this hour of night, it was ink-black and stung like hell.

He felt with his feet for the bottom, and, when he thought he finally found it, kicked it as hard as he could. Unfortunately, it was as efficient as kicking air, as the bottom was silt and his clothes were weighing him down. He was starting to see spots from fighting the reflex to gasp when a hand firmly gripped his collar and yanked him upwards.

In spite of his best efforts, a good deal of grit and muddy water still made its way up his nose and in his mouth as he came up for air.

"Louis! Louis, are you okay?"

LeBeau rubbed his eyes and nose free of mud as much as he could and blinked.

Carter was still holding his collar, his other hand gripping a lot of thin but sturdy-looking roots sticking out of the river bank. He was maybe fifty centimetres from the bank, but water came up to his neck.

LeBeau spit out dirty water and faltered, "Y—yes … I think so. Merci, André." Carter let him go, and he joined him near the bank. One glance was enough to see that getting back up the slope was not going to be easy. "Oh, bon Dieu … Did you try to climb back up?"

Carter followed his gaze, but didn't loosen his death grip on the roots. His knuckles shone white in the dim starlight.

"Just once, and I slipped right back in. Then you turned up." He opened his mouth, closed it, and asked quietly, "Did you see Newkirk?"

Cold that had nothing to do with the temperatures gripped LeBeau's insides, and he shivered. He shook his head – slightly, to avoid going under again.

"But," he added with all the determination he could muster, "he's probably looking for us right now. And if he finds us in that pond we'll never live it down. Come on."

Carter still looked just as unsure and worried as he felt, but he nodded and tentatively grasped a protruding root to hoist himself out. LeBeau seized what he could and heaved, but his hands were chilled and wet and the earth was little better than sludge, and they both dropped right back into the cold water.

After four or five attempts and as many failures, LeBeau was covered in mud, frozen to the bone and fed up with the whole business. He stopped to looked around for a spot where the slope wasn't so slippery, and found one a few metres away.

To his surprise, when he pointed this out to Carter, the American didn't budge.

"No, you … you go. I'm staying here."

"Don't be ridiculous," LeBeau almost snapped, his already short temper even shortened by the cold, the water, and the mud which he could feel had somehow made its way everywhere, even between his toes. It was thoroughly unpleasant. "Look, just over there might do it, the slope doesn't look as bad."

Still Carter gripped his roots. "I'm not moving, Louis."

LeBeau rolled his eyes, trying to stop his teeth from chattering. "If you think I'm not leaving you here, you're crazy. What do you think I'll do when I get out, throw you a rope?" He peered at him through the gloom and the fog, sudden concern flaring up. "You're not stuck, are you? Can you move your feet?"

"Oh, sure I can." The tip of a boot emerged just long enough for LeBeau to see it, then plunged back. "Look – just go, I'm not going anywhere. Then you'll come back and find some branch I can hold on to or something. But … I can't."

LeBeau's patience snapped so suddenly it was almost audible. "You can't _what_?"

"I can't swim."

Carter's voice was so low LeBeau had trouble making out the words. When he did, he was startled out of his annoyance; but he kept up the façade, because pretending to be angry was more efficient for warming himself up than the alternative.

"And just because you can't swim, you think I'm going to leave you here? Ça va pas, non?" He paddled his way to Carter, and jerked a thumb towards a likely spot half a dozen metres away. "We just have to go there – I think there's a few good holds. And it's not far, it's –" he did a quick calculation "– maybe six or seven yards. Just follow along the bank, like that."

The bank in question seemed determined to not let anyone so much as take a hold of it, but somehow LeBeau managed to get Carter to let go of his roots and grip something else, mostly earth. His hold was shaking, and he kept his eyes glued on the bank to avoid glancing at the rippling water behind, but it seemed to work. They slowly gained one metre.

"Okay, not bad. Try again a little further."

Somehow, centimetre by centimetre, they both made it to the spot LeBeau had noticed earlier. Carter's eyes remained almost closed for most of it and he even almost went under at some point – his hand shot out and grasped LeBeau by the shoulder, pulling him down too; they both came up gasping and spouting muddy water, and in LeBeau's case, cursing the air blue – but after who knows how long, they managed to rest their heads and arms on a slightly gentler slope.

"When the war is over," LeBeau rasped, grit in his throat and the taste of mud on his tongue, "_promise_ me you'll learn to swim."

"I'll … try," Carter answered with the same kind of voice, still shivering (although this time the cold was mostly to blame). "It's not easy, though. Most of the time the White River's not deep enough." He dug his little finger into his ear, presumably to drive the water out. "There's a river in Paris, right? The Seine? 'That where you learned to swim?"

Any other time, nostalgia would probably have metaphorically tapped LeBeau on the shoulder and settled in at the mention of his beloved city. But this was not the time and place to get homesick.

"Yes, and no. I learned to swim because my big brother threw me into the Bassin de la Villette when I was ten." Martin had got the thrashing of his life when their mother had found the two of them dripping water on the doorstep, but it had been such an adventure that Louis hadn't really minded. After that, every other hot summer day was spent sneaking to the Bassin and swimming between the barges.

They waited a couple of seconds more to get their breath back, their chests heaving at the same erratic rhythm; then they turned to each other at the same time.

"Let's go find Newkirk."

"Oh yes."

Crawling up that bank was long and difficult, but not infeasible, and after a while they both struggled up the slope and looked up. They were greeted by a distressingly close bright glare and a rush of heat. The wind had changed, and the fire had spread from the fuel tank explosion and caught up with them. There was no escape that way.

LeBeau's heart constricted. _I refuse to believe Newkirk is somewhere in there. He can't be. He's smarter than that … Isn't he?_

Holding back a sigh, he braced himself to convince Carter that they were probably safer edging the pond. Before he could say a word, a familiar figure came pelting out of the smoke and blaze, long legs hitting the ground as fast as they could. It happened in a second, but there was no mistaking the silhouette and the RAF blue uniform.

Newkirk hurtled past LeBeau so fast that the Frenchman lost his footing and tumbled back into the water, and threw himself into the pond.

The water must be slightly shallower there, and the bottom more solid, for LeBeau had no problem kicking and swimming his way to the surface this time. It was just as turbid, though, and he fought back the urge to gag while he coughed it out. But there were more pressing problems for the time being.

"Carter!" he called, scrutinising the dark surface of the pond. The faint starlight reflected from the misty pond, but it was not enough to see properly, and everything on the bank that was not the glare of the fire some way away was wrapped in shadows. Carter didn't answer, and LeBeau realised with a jolt that this meant he had probably fallen back in at the same time _he_ had. "André! Où es-tu, bon sang?"

A splashing sound made him whirl around in time to discern Newkirk's brown-haired head breaking the surface. He was out of breath and covered in soot, but his face lit up in the space of a second when he spotted LeBeau. Even in the darkness his wide grin was impossible to miss.

"Cor blimey, Louis! It's good to see you, mate! How did you end up in here?"

There was still no sign of Carter whatsoever, and a cold, leaden feeling dropped in the pit of LeBeau's stomach so abruptly he almost sank back to the bottom of the pond. His throat closed up. He could _not_ have lost one of his best friends at the exact same moment the other was found again. No way.

"Newkirk …"

From what he could see – which was very little – the expression on the Englishman's face faded from delight to slight alarm, and he swam closer, brows knitted.

"Newkirk, Carter is …" LeBeau's voice trailed off, and he cleared his throat awkwardly. "I can't find him."

"What? What d'you mean?"

"He was right there, and now he's … not."

Newkirk was probably making an effort to hide it, but worry showed on his face as clearly as though he was in broad delight nonetheless. "But he can't swim!"

"I _know_!"

"But if he fell in, we would've heard him, or seen bubbles or something!"

"Not if he went straight to the bottom and got stuck!"

"_Ow_."

"Don't be stupid, it's not that deep. I can almost touch bottom with me feet."

"But if he was still on the bank, he would have said something by now!"

"Yeah, well, maybe he –" Newkirk stopped short, looking puzzled. His eyes narrowed. "Did you hear something?"

"Like what," LeBeau snapped, because anger was much easier to deal with than the worry and possible grief gnawing at his guts, "another plane?"

But he strained his ears, all the same.

And finally heard a soft groan in the vicinity of the bank.

"Carter?" LeBeau and Newkirk called at the same time, racing to the sound as fast as they could.

Carter's head half emerged from a thorny bush which half jutted into the pond. As LeBeau swam closer, he saw him slowly raise a hand to his skull and wince, looking quite confused.

"What … ow. What I am doing here? What happened?" And because it was Carter, the bewildered look on his face was immediately replaced by a bright, grateful smile. "Oh, hey, Newkirk! We've been looking for you, you know. I'm glad you're safe."

LeBeau struggled up the slope again to lend him a hand, grinning like an idiot with relief, while Newkirk followed him, grumbling, "Looking for _me_, he says. _Glad you're safe_, he says. Never mind us thinking _he_'d drowned and it was our fault."

It took the two of them and a lot of patience to extricate Carter from his bush. By the time he was out, LeBeau's gloves were more or less ruined, and Newkirk, less lucky, sported quite a few small cuts on his hands. It was practically nothing next to Carter, though, who looked as though he had fought a vicious brawl with half a dozen angry cats. And lost.

Slowly, carefully, they plodded through the sludge along the edge of the pond, shoes and socks squelching at every step, eyes burning, trying not to shiver too much. Newkirk was in front, Carter a little behind, and LeBeau brought up the rear, which allowed him to keep an eye on his companions.

He winced when Newkirk took the lead and walked away. The back of his jacket and trousers sported several dark patches where the fire had caught up with him. No wonder he had been running so fast.

Thankfully, the fire seemed to be burning itself out, the heat not strong enough to dry the soaked trees and moss.

"Who wants to bet the Guv'nor will use this fire tomorrow for some operation or other?" Newkirk whispered when they seemed to be in the clear. LeBeau grinned, and Carter shook his head.

"I'm not gonna bet against you for that. I know you'll win."

"That wouldn't surprise me, though," LeBeau mused. "Sometimes I get the impression that some of his plans could be simpler, but he just wants to annoy the Krauts."

"Well, he knows how to make things interesting, doesn't he?"

"'Interesting' like an episode of _The Shadow_, or 'interesting' like the plane and the fire?" asked Carter in a small voice. He had stopped wincing at every step, but still appeared uncharacteristically downcast. Since LeBeau felt like every square inch of himself had a bruise from his earlier tumble down the slope and into the pond, he could heartily, though silently, sympathise. At least _he_ hadn't crawled his way out of a thorny bush.

Newkirk shot him a look, but didn't answer.

Avoiding the burned area had brought them a little too near the road for comfort, even with the relative cover of the fog. After making sure nothing was moving, Newkirk brought a finger to his lips and tiptoed closer to make sure the way was clear.

Disaster befell them for the second time that night in the form of a blurry figure in a Luftwaffe flight suit who seemed to spring out of nowhere. It tackled Newkirk, who fell with a strangled cry, and they both disappeared under the large wet ferns which bordered the road.

Obviously, the pilot of the stricken plane had bailed out and survived.

LeBeau and Carter didn't hesitate for a second. They leapt at the attacker as one.

LeBeau's muscles felt stiff and sore from his dip in the pond, but when he grabbed a hold of a collar that didn't belong to Newkirk, he punched the owner as hard as he could. Any qualms he might have had about fighting two against one quickly vanished when he saw that Newkirk wasn't moving. The German gave as good as he got; he kicked, punched, bit, head-butted, and both Carter and LeBeau were struggling to keep him down.

"Would – you just – _stop_ – moving!" Carter yelled through a split lip as he barely ducked a foot to the chin. Surprisingly, the guy frowned and went still, and both Frenchman and American breathed in relief.

Of course, LeBeau at least should have seen this coming – the thought kept running through his head for a long time afterwards. Just as he turned his head to check on Newkirk, their attacker kicked him right where no man with anything resembling basic human solidarity should ever kick another man, _hard_. The world blurred, and he crumpled soundlessly, gasping for breath.

And then he stopped breathing altogether when the German pilot produced a gun and in one swift, fluid gesture, pressed it against Carter's forehead.

* * *

I didn't start this story with the intent of having a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter, but for some reason it seemed to fit rather well …

Translations/Notes:

_Oh, bon Dieu_: "Oh, good God/blimey/bloody hell (_but much milder_) …"

_Ça va pas, non?_: colloquial, "What's wrong with you?" (meaning, "Are you nuts?")

Où es-tu, bon sang?: _"Where the heck are you/Where are you, darnit?"_

Carter's inability to swim is shown in Will the Blue Baron Strike Again, though later contradicted by The Well. And the White River does run through the _actual_ Muncie, Indiana :o)

Being thrown into water at ten/elevenish is how my dad learned to swim, if you swap the Bassin de la Villette with Saint-Jean de Luz harbour. Not such a bad memory for him either, oddly enough.


	3. Chapter Three

**Author's note**: Carter's turn at the PoV now :o) It's a hard day's night for our heroes … and it's not getting any better!

This chapter is where Rune's German help was especially precious. Thanks a lot!

_Disclaimer: The three musketeers (no, not those guys) belong to Fein's estate and Ruddy, but all original characters belong to me. They get their fair share of misery, too._

* * *

**Out of the Frying Pan**

_**Chapter Three**_

Carter froze, and for a brief moment everything else seemed to grind to a halt as well. From the corner of his eye he could make out Newkirk's still form on the ground a few paces behind the German pilot, and LeBeau, bloodless face twisted in pain, staring at him with wide eyes … But the gun filled his whole field of vision.

It was a Lüger, sleek, black and shiny, and right now it was the most important thing in the world – at least to Carter. He risked a glance at the guy's face behind the gun, and went cold inside. The German didn't have the look of somebody about to gloat. He had the look of someone who just wanted to survive.

And indeed, he didn't gloat, he didn't make a cutting comment or even smile before he pressed the trigger. Carter didn't even have time to close his eyes in terror.

The gun went _click_. The sound seemed to echo throughout the woods.

Carter realised he was still alive half a second before the German realised that there was something wrong with his gun. Acting on an explosive mix of instincts, terror and pure adrenalin, he drew back and landed the most beautifully textbook right hook he had ever delivered. Somewhere in the back of his head something wished that Kinch had been there to give his opinion on this punch.

The German went down like a sack of potatoes.

The next second, Carter was biting down a yelp and trying to shake some life back into his hand. He hadn't punched that many guys in his life, and so regularly forgot how much it hurt.

"La vache, Carter! Are you okay?" LeBeau was still walking a little funny, and colour had yet to start creeping back up into his cheeks. He seized Carter's arm and badly flinched when his eyes flicked to Carter's bleeding lip.

Reaction was settling in, and Carter's legs were starting to feel like that funny jelly he had tasted in England before he got shot down. He nodded nevertheless, not even caring that LeBeau would inevitably notice how much his hands were shaking. "Yeah, I … I guess so." He shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other while the Frenchman checked that their would-be attacker was no longer a threat. "So, is he, uh …"

"Out cold. You did a great job!" There was a hint of incredulous surprise in LeBeau's voice, and maybe some other time Carter would have shrugged it off. Right now, though, he was tired, chilled to the bone and aching all over, so the remark annoyed him – was it _that_ unbelievable, coming from him?

While LeBeau relieved the German of his weapons (including a knife in his right boot), Carter bent over Newkirk, who was stirring and mumbling something he didn't catch.

"Take it easy, Newkirk," he said as the Englishman slowly raised his head and looked about him, bleary-eyed. "Gee, you're gonna have a nasty bump."

"Reckon I've got one already," Newkirk muttered, rubbing gingerly the back of his head. "Bloody hell … Did you get the number of that locomotive? How many of the buggers jumped me?"

"Just the one guy."

"Really?" Newkirk's eyes fell on the German whose hands LeBeau was busy tying up with the guy's own shoelaces. "Well. Thought he was a lot bigger than that."

"The way he kicked, he didn't need to be bigger. And if he hadn't been alone …" Carter wiped a drop of blood from his lip to keep from shuddering. "I'm just lucky his gun jammed."

Newkirk peered at him a lot more sharply, and Carter was suddenly glad his hands had stopped trembling before he had truly woken up. Newkirk got scared every now and then like everybody else, for himself or others, and he was the first to admit it when a mission sounded much too chancy or when he got badly shaken; but he also tended to say lots of things for the sake of making a joke. The last thing Carter wanted was to advertise just how terrified he had been staring into the muzzle of that gun.

He was still shaking a little, but at least he could pretend it was because of the cold.

"We all got lucky, sounds like," Newkirk finally said as he gripped Carter's arm to get to his feet. "This night just keeps getting more and more interesting."

"Don't say that!" LeBeau almost snapped, stepping over their unconscious prisoner to stare at the Englishman more closely. His sudden outburst made Carter jump a little. "Every time you said that word tonight, something bad happened." Then his half-hearted glare softened a little, and heartfelt worry took over. "Are you all right?"

"Ask me again when me head's back to normal. For the moment it feels bigger than Westminster Cathedral. _And_ it's ringing like it's ruddy Christmas day." Newkirk prodded the inert body with his foot. "So, what do we do about him, then?"

"I'd say we drop him into the pond, but he would float back to the surface," LeBeau muttered grimly. Carter honestly couldn't tell if he was joking or not, and for a second he couldn't bring himself to care. It was hard to feel sorry for somebody who just a few minutes before had put a gun against his head and pulled the trigger, just like that.

After one glance at the guy's face, though, Carter decided he could afford a little pity. After all, he must have thought that it was him or them, and in other circumstances he might not have been such a bad guy. _Who knows? Maybe he isn't. War does things to people_.

"Let's take him with us," he said, surprising even himself with the suggestion. "Perhaps he knows useful stuff. The Underground can take care of him after that and ship him to one of _our_ POW camps."

The other two stared at him.

Just when he started to think this was a really stupid idea and wondering who was going to suggest bumping the German off first, Newkirk nodded. "All right. Maybe our Kraut friend will tell us just what he was doing all alone in his Messerschmitt over Hammelburg when we know for a fact there was no raid planned in the area tonight."

LeBeau seemed to ponder this, and, after a look in Carter's direction, nodded too.

Since Newkirk was still swaying ever so slightly, Carter picked up the German's shoulders while LeBeau took up his feet, and they trudged back to camp into a fog that still vaguely smelled like smoke, side-stepping the puddles as much as they could.

Their prisoner woke up about fifty yards later.

Carter heard him mutter "Was ist passiert? Was …" Then he must have figured out what happened by himself, because he twisted and twitched so much that Carter and LeBeau had to drop him. It was that, or getting yet another bruise.

The German looked around frantically, and there was a hint of desperation in his voice when he barked, "Gebt lieber auf! Ihr seid umzingelt!"

"Stop yelling like that, we're _not_ surrounded," Carter retorted. "You're all alone."

LeBeau had a nasty sort of smile on his face. "In fact, if there's somebody here who's surrounded, it's you."

The pilot tested the knots around his wrists, but they held fast. "Dafür werdet ihr bezahlen!" he snarled. "Schweinepriester!"

Newkirk pointed his own gun at him. The guy closed his mouth and squinted at the barrel. Carter wondered if he was feeling the same terror _he_ had felt in the same situation.

"Lay off the insults, mate," Newkirk said coldly. "You're our prisoner now, so behave."

The German growled something that made Carter frown, perplexed. "Did he just call you a pig hound?"

Newkirk opened and closed his mouth, apparently uncertain whether he should be angry or amused. He opted for something halfway between the two, and his lips twitched. "… No, Carter, he really didn't. Blimey, someone's got a potty mouth." Then he turned back to the prisoner, all traces of mirth gone. "Listen up, sunshine. Don't know if you've noticed, but it's a bit nippy, the weather's bloody miserable, we're drenched to the bone and we don't have all night, so I'll keep it simple. You're coming with us, end of."

"… Oder?"

"Or else? Well, it's your funeral."

"Provided they find your body," LeBeau added conversationally. The German's eyes darted from one to the other, then came to rest on Carter, who shrugged and tried to keep in the spirit of the thing.

"Hey, don't look at me, I voted for letting you live. Told them you probably knew stuff." He cocked his head slightly on the side and narrowed his eyes. "Do you speak English at all?"

The prisoner's eyes went from Carter to the gun then back to Carter, and his glare faded to a sullen scowl.

"I speak a little."

"There you go," Carter said with enthusiasm he didn't really have. Right now, the only thing that kept him on his feet was the knowledge that he would get a hot cup of coffee, dry clothes and a spot near the stove when they were back in camp.

Newkirk rolled his eyes. "Yeah, we're making progress. Marvellous." He made a 'get up' gesture with the hand that held the gun. "Now start walking. We're done carrying you."

The German glared daggers at him, but stood up with more bad grace than real difficulty despite his bound hands. Newkirk was sharp enough to leave a few paces between him and the gun, enough that he could not miss if their prisoner attempt to run, but far enough that he could react should the pilot try something more aggressive.

Carter fell in right behind Newkirk, and LeBeau took up the rear again.

After a while, and even though walking warmed him up some, he got so tired of shivering that he unclenched his jaw and asked in a low voice, "So, Fritz, what's your name?"

German, Englishman and Frenchman turned to him with nearly the same expression of disbelief on their faces. It was almost unsettling.

Newkirk recovered first, of course.

"Carter, he's our prisoner, not a stray you picked up in the woods."

"Why do you want to waste time on something like that?" asked LeBeau angrily. "That guy almost killed you!"

Carter shrugged. "I know, but still – he's got a name. I can't keep calling him 'that guy' in my head."

"Yes, you bloody well can, at least for the rest of the trip!" Newkirk stared at him in open disbelief, but his gun was still firmly trained on the German. "Unbelievable."

"You can call him anything you like in your head," muttered LeBeau. "'Fritz', 'Jerry', 'Kraut', 'Boche', 'Fridolin', 'Teuton', 'Chleuh' – it's not like he will mind."

"And if he does mind, well, tough break." Carter thought the American saying sounded strange with Newkirk's Cockney accent. "He'll tell us everything he knows that's useful when we get him to our place. Which reminds me – LeBeau, give us your scarf."

LeBeau opened his mouth to protest, but after seeing Newkirk's expression and glancing at the still-unnamed German, pulled on his soaked red scarf with only a grumbled complain. Newkirk deftly tied it over the prisoner's eyes and somehow made a neat, solid-looking knot behind his head.

"There. No peeking."

"Is supposed to be funny?" 'Fritz' protested. "I cannot see my feet! I'll fall!"

"Don't worry, we're watching you closely," snapped LeBeau, who still looked clearly disgruntled at the temporary loss of his scarf, despite the fact that it was as wet as he was and couldn't be very warm. "We won't let you escape, and we won't let you fall, either. No matter how tempting it is," he muttered, almost too low for Carter to hear.

The look on the prisoner's face made it clear the words had been heard and fully understood.

Between his waterlogged clothes, the scratches on his face that were starting to smart, and his general state of fatigue, Carter was starting to feel more miserable than he had been in a long time. The rational part of his brain argued that a few hours, at the most, had passed since they left Hilda's Hofbräu, but the pretty owner's smile as she waved goodbye now seemed ages ago and very, very far away.

They were still trudging the forest along the road, careful not to get caught in bramble or step into a hole. The ground was treacherous, and Carter was so focused on not letting himself trip that, at the sound of the German's low voice, he almost did stumble.

"Has my plane fallen on the forest?"

"What?"

"My plane. I saw a city near. I tried for the forest, but …"

LeBeau and Newkirk shot him surprised glances. Carter answered immediately, "It crashed in the forest."

"Not – city?"

"No, nobody got hurt."

Newkirk rolled his eyes, and LeBeau had the funny expression Carter had quickly come to associate with 'I can't _believe_ what I'm hearing'. He had the satisfaction of seeing the prisoner's shoulders slump slightly in relief. _If he's worried that the plane crash might have hurt someone, he can't be _all_ bad._

"What were you doing on your own like that, anyway?" Carter prodded, stepping over a particularly vicious bramble branch. "Deserting?"

Judging by the way the German's head swivelled in the direction of his voice – almost fast enough to give himself whiplash – and the way the lower part of his face contorted, this was either exactly the wrong thing to say …

"Natürlich nicht! Your planes attacked Frankfurt, the Luftwaffe attacked _them_!"

… Or exactly the right thing to say.

"You're a long way from Frankfurt, mate," Newkirk countered, squinting at the German – not that the prisoner could see it. "What happened, you got caught up in the dogfight and forgot the time?"

'Fritz' – it really did bother Carter that they still didn't know his name – stiffened, perhaps regretting having said too much, but shrugged and continued nonetheless.

"My plane was hit. Instruments – kaputt. I tried to reach the near base at …" This time he stopped himself before he could give away anything precise, and went on, tight-lipped, "In the end, I jumped."

"That explains why he was in the area," LeBeau said in a low voice with a swift glance at Carter and what might have been a smile. "_And_ now we know there's an airfield not far from here."

"Let's hope our Kraut friend here has interesting information up his sleeve," Newkirk added with a definite smirk, taking the German by the arm and starting to walk again.

After a few seconds, Carter heard LeBeau mutter to Newkirk, "You _had_ to use that word again."

"Oh, please, just because I said 'interesting' …"

"Look, I'm not superstitious, but –"

"Yes you are, if you think one ruddy word is enough to jinx us!"

"What means the word, äh, 'jinx'?" 'Fritz' asked Carter in an undertone, looking puzzled. Carter sighed.

"'Verhexen', I think. They're joking, though. Guys, would you just –" He stopped, and his breath caught in his throat. Soldiers were trudging through the forest not fifteen yards away. Whether they were Wehrmacht, SS or Stalag XIII guards, Carter couldn't tell through the fog and the darkness. He tackled the German pilot and clamped a hand on his mouth. Newkirk and LeBeau paused in their whispered argument, shot one glance in the soldiers' direction, and dropped to the ground at the same time.

The patrol had to be about half a mile from the tunnel entrance.

Newkirk swore under his breath. "Well, doesn't that just top everything."

"They're heading towards the road. We could try going around them," suggested LeBeau.

They agreed, and started walking the long way, putting as much distance as they could between them and the soldiers. 'Fritz' moved stiffly, as though he had hurt something when Carter had pounced on him, and the American felt a twinge of pity – which didn't stop him from making sure their prisoner knew that he was expendable before removing his hand from this mouth. The thought of killing someone like that, up close and personal, made Carter feel queasy and uncomfortable, but if it had to be done – if his buddies' lives depended on it – then he would (should?) do it in a heartbeat.

_How different does that make me from this guy, then?_ he thought.

Carter didn't have time to answer his own question. 'Fritz', still blindfolded, stepped on a twig; the _crack_ sounded loud and clear as a bell throughout the woods, freezing the three Allies into place and inevitably drawing the patrol's attention.

Suddenly nobody was concerned with not snapping twigs or breaking branches any more – they couldn't even hear themselves running in the midst of all the shouting and weapons firing in their general direction. Somehow Carter managed to keep 'Fritz' on his feet as they bolted between the wet ferns and trees, lungs on fire, a mix of self-preservation and terror guiding their feet.

How nobody got killed was a miracle.

How they found the fake tree stump and managed to disappear down the tunnel before the Germans knew what actually happened was another.

So maybe bad luck striking again at that point and preventing a third miracle was fair enough. LeBeau swiftly slid down the ladder, Carter followed, then their prisoner, hastily helped by Newkirk, who lost no time closing the lid.

Carter was five rungs from the floor of the tunnel when he heard a startled Cockney oath and a gasp from 'Fritz', and looked down to see LeBeau drawing breath to shout.

The next second, everything went dark.

* * *

Well, you didn't think it would be that easy, did you? ;o)

Translations/Notes:

_La vache !_: Word-for-word, "the cow" – yes, French does have an expression equivalent to "holy cow", without the holy bit. "_(Oh) la vache_" is one of the expletives I use most; it's colloquial, but quite mild. Don't ask me what is so special about cows, though …

_Was ist passiert? Was …_: "What happened? What …"

_Gebt lieber auf! Ihr seid __umzingelt__!_: "You'd better give up! You're surrounded!" Plural, informal.

_Dafür werdet ihr bezahlen!_: "You will pay for this!" Plural and informal as well.

_Schweine__priester__!_: "Bastards" (swine-herders were not very highly regarded in medieval monasteries). _Schweine__hund_ (plural _Schweinehunde_) – literally, "pig-dogs" – roughly means the same thing, although I'm told it's ruder.

_Oder__?_: "Or else?"


	4. Chapter Four

**Author's Note**: Here's the last chapter! I hope you enjoyed reading this story as much as I did writing and especially finishing it :o)

_Disclaimer: The guys belong to Ruddy and Fein's estate, their prisoner belongs to me. Who knows, he could come back someday (I doubt it, though)._

* * *

**Out of the Frying Pan**

**_Chapter Four_**

It was usually quiet underground. Every sound from the surface which made its way down was muffled, deadened by the distance it had to travel to get there. Any noise from somewhere in the tunnels, though, carried pretty well.

Kinch's first instinct when he heard the shout and the loud thud from the tree stump entrance was to pick up the gun he kept nearby when he worked in the radio room, and go investigate.

The sight which greeted his eyes when he got to the bottom of the ladder made him stop in his tracks for a second.

Carter and LeBeau were sprawled out cold on the floor beneath a guy in a German flight suit, whose hands were bound behind his back. What appeared to be LeBeau's scarf was tightly knotted behind his head, covering his eyes, and he was making a commendable but futile effort to either remove it or possibly rub his head, groaning. Meanwhile, Newkirk descended the last rungs. Relief flooded his face when he saw Kinch.

"Good to see you, mate. Blimey, what a night."

"It's only two in the morning, Newkirk," said Kinch, taken aback by his friends' state. Aside from the German, who only had bits of leaves and things stuck on his face and his flight suit, they were all drenched, covered in mud and scratched and bruised all over. Carter's jacket was in tatters, and Newkirk's clothes had a singed look. Some of the hair of the back of his head curled up a little. "What _happened_?"

"Bad luck, mostly. Look what we picked up on the way, though."

Kinch grabbed the German pilot to get him off Carter and LeBeau, who were stirring, and sharply instructed him in his language to shut up and stay still. The prisoner froze instantly.

It didn't take very long for Carter and LeBeau to come to. When they did, they looked like they very much regretted leaving the happy land of Unconsciousness.

"J'ai un de ces mal de crâne," muttered LeBeau. "Je te retiens, Newkirk! Bon Dieu, mais qu'est-ce qui t'a pris de le lâcher, le Boche?"

Carter, who still appeared a little dazed, was much more laconic but no less meaningful.

"_Ow_."

"You think it was easy, holding the blighter up with one hand while I made sure the Krauts wouldn't spot the tunnel entrance?" Newkirk immediately retorted. "Guess what, mate, it's _not_."

LeBeau glared at him blearily, and was about to reply something undoubtedly unpleasant, but was interrupted by a great big sneeze. Kinch threw both of them a Look.

"Stop it, you two. Carter, you okay?"

"Sure," said Carter in a voice that was still a bit too faraway for Kinch's liking.

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Aw, come on, Kinch, I didn't get knocked out that bad."

"How many, Carter?"

"… Five. No, wait, four."

Kinch looked at his index and middle finger, and sighed.

"Right. Go on up, I'll get the medic to check you out. All three of you," he added with a pointed glance at Newkirk and LeBeau, who were shivering. "What did you do, went for a swim in the river?"

"Well, no," said Newkirk. "That would have been stupid of us, wouldn't it?"

"Then why …?"

"We fell in a pond."

"_We_ fell," LeBeau pointed out, looking marginally less grumpy. "Newkirk jumped."

"'Cause he was on fire at the time," said Carter helpfully, as though that explained everything instead of raising even more questions. Kinch felt a sudden urge to rub the bridge of his nose.

"Okay. Stop. You'll be better off in dry clothes. Just give me a second –"

He walked over to the German and told him in no uncertain terms that the war was over for him, that he was now a prisoner, and his future would be much brighter if he cooperated completely. As in, he would actually have one.

Kinch finished by demanding said prisoner's name, and the German mumbled sullenly, "Leutnant Richter. Fritz – äh, Friedrich – Richter."

"Well, what do you know, guys," said Carter with a half smile, "his name really is Fritz after all."

Newkirk and LeBeau gave him singularly similar looks.

"Great. That would have kept me up tonight for sure if –" Newkirk was interrupted by the clatter of the bunk bed rising. Five seconds later, Colonel Hogan was standing in the tunnel, two mugs of coffee in hand, surveying his troops with a rare bemused expression.

"What …?"

Newkirk, Carter and LeBeau all started to explain at the same time.

"You see, there was this fog –"

"– Then the plane fell on us!"

"… Fire all over the place, sir, I swear that bloody pond saved my life –"

"– I almost drowned, but then Carter pulled me out."

"We did get Carter back, though, he was all tangled up in brambles –"

"… But the pilot got the jump on us, knocked Newkirk out real bad –"

"Patrol turned up, shooting everywhere –"

"Can you believe Newkirk dropped that Boche on us!?"

"… And I'm _pretty_ sure Kinch wasn't holding up four fingers. … What?"

For once, Hogan looked completely dumbfounded. It was so unusual that, for a second, Kinch seriously considered snapping a picture to immortalise the moment. Which, Hogan being Hogan, naturally didn't last.

"Well," he said with a smile, "looks like you fellows had an interesting trip back."

The offhand quip drew completely unexpected reactions from the trio. Newkirk looked uncomfortable, LeBeau stared at Hogan with a startled expression, and Carter frowned in an almost reproachful way.

"Think we'll all be very happy if we don't hear that word again tonight, Guv'nor. For … some reason."

"Forget tonight, I don't want to hear it ever again! … Or at least not before a month."

"You know, sir, those times when you say, 'At least it's not raining', and then it starts raining right away? Well, it was like that, except with a plane crash, and fire, and really really cold muddy water, and people shooting at us."

They gave vague, half-hearted salutes and squelched off to the bunk bed entrance, leaving a completely nonplussed Kinch (and Hogan) behind, trailing muddy footprints all the way.

"Kinch," said Hogan after a little while, "you don't believe in jinxes, do you?"

"No, sir."

"Good."

"Then again …"

"What?"

Kinch cast a thoughtful glance at the trussed-up, gagged German in the corner, then up at the now closed tunnel entrance, and finally at his CO.

"Just be careful next time you want to say 'What could possibly go wrong?' before a mission, even if it looks pretty simple. You know, just in case."

THE END

* * *

Notes/Translations:

_J'ai un de ces mal de crâne_: "I've got one (heck) of a headache"

_Je te retiens__, Newkirk! __Bon Dieu, mais qu'est-ce qui t'a pris de le lâcher, le Boche__?_: "I won't forget this/Dammit, Newkirk! What the hell were you thinking of, letting go of that Kraut?"

For the record, I don't believe in jinxes, and I don't think Kinch does, either. But after a particularly spectacular bad day (or night, in this case), it's so, well, tempting to think that some phrases were just tempting fate …

Hope you liked! Have a good New Year's Eve :o)


End file.
